ID Theft

Act now to protect yourself.

- Miriam Cross, Lisa Gerstner and Brendan Pedersen

As new research on identity theft continues to roll in, it paints an unsettling picture of how good crooks are getting at their craft. Although the number of U.S. breaches fell in 2018, the number of records exposed containing sensitive, personally identifiable information (such as Social Security and financial-account numbers) spiked by 126% from the year before, according to a report from the Identity Theft Resource Center. “That tells us thieves aren’t committing less crime—they’re just getting better at it,” says Eva Velasquez, president and CEO of the ITRC.

One of the largest breaches disclosed last year was at Marriott International, which admitted in November that its Starwood guest reservation database had been hacked starting in 2014. That exposed up to 383 million guest records (though the number of guests affected is likely smaller because of multiple records). Many records contained data such as passport numbers, addresses, dates of birth and, in some cases, customers’ payment-card information. Quora, an online question-and-answer platform, also discovered a breach of account information including names, e-mail addresses and passwords of up to 100 million users. Hackers may try to enter stolen usernames and passwords into other sites—say, those of banks or retailers—in hopes that some customers reuse their log-in details across several accounts. “The chances that some of those credentials will work on one or more other websites are exceptionally high,” says Velasquez.